MOLLY O
Starring Mabel Normand
PICTURE PLAY
February 1922
You would hardly recognize the fine Italian hand of Mack Sennett in this soft and romantic love story. Not a pie is thrown from reel to reel. Moreover it stars that late champion slapstick artist, Mabel Normand, as a more or less demure young thing.
The plot is an old favorite. In the yellow-backed dime-novel days it was called "The Millionaire and the Washer Woman's Daughter; or, From Suds to Diamonds." Still farther back it was known as "Cinderella." It shows little Molly Adair living happily in her sordid surroundings until she falls in love with the picture of the wealthiest doctor in town. The meeting, the masked ball, the marriage follow just as they did in the earlier classics. And the ending is happier than ever.
The direction and photography are unusually good - I don't know when I have seen more realistic slums than this picture of Molly's home life. Sometimes they were realistic enough to be actually unpleasant. Why do writers of Irish scenarios always consider dirt the most amusing and captivating thing in the world?